1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to cooking appliances and, in particular, to cooking appliance controls.
2) Description of Prior Art
Electric and gas stoves using electric or gas heating elements are popular consumer appliances for home cooking uses. However, such consumer devices are used in locations that may have children, or other persons that should not operate cooking appliances.
A consumer-friendly lockout device for allowing a user to make a cooking or heating appliance inoperative by unauthorized persons would be useful. However, when an appliance has been deactivated, a problem arises that an unauthorized person may have tried to activate the appliance when the device is preventing such activation, but leaving one or more of the appliance controls in an “activated” condition. If the appliance controls remain in an activated state, operating the lockout device to re-activate the appliance could lead to a situation where the appliance is unexpectedly activated by the user, perhaps without the user's knowledge. A means for preventing such unauthorized activation, and/or a means for notifying the user of such a problem, would be useful.
Also, a lockout device might be inadvertently or improperly activated while the appliance is in use. A means of preventing, and/or notifying of, such improper or inadvertent use of the device to avoid potential interruption of the appliance use (such as cooking) would be beneficial.
Further, because more and more appliances are using microprocessor and/or controller control, it would be useful for a lockout device to communicate its states to, and receive state information from, such a processor/controller to allow coordinated operation with other appliance features and perhaps to allow multiple activation/deactivation sources.
Even further, it would be useful for a lockout device to provide notification to a user of the above described conditions and operating states, among other useful notifications.